


Earthly Delights

by manic_intent



Category: John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Good Omens Fusion, Demon!Santino, M/M, That Good Omens AU where Santino plays a game with John forever, Wing Kink, angel!John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 23:08:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11679015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: John fired the gun and shattered time.Reality crystallised around the wake of the bullet, fragmenting inwards, as though it was puncturing layers upon layers of mirrors, the shards tearing outwards in new leaves. It slowed. Stopped in the air, an inch away from Santino’s forehead. Santino smiled, swallowing his food, dabbing his mouth. John stared, taking a step back. Winston’s hand was outstretched. Frozen, like everyone else was frozen, in the middle of turning, in the middle of eating, drinking. Breathing.





	Earthly Delights

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt 7: Wingfic 
> 
> Ahaha. There’s an Angel/Demon trope that I love, the Good Omens AU. You don’t have to have read Good Omens to read this, but if you haven’t read that book, it’s amazing.

then

“The same trap every time,” Astaroth said, smiling. The Duke of Hell was lounging over the divan, great gray wings folded lazily over the stone floor of the derelict house to either side, the colour of a killing sky. “Azrael. You’re not even trying.”

Cursed into Prime space, folded into three dimensions, the Angel of Death snarled and howled, its forms liquid in feathers and scales. It had three human heads, then none, then it was a many-winged lion, battering against the unseen. Astaroth watched it try for a while, amused, then he rolled carefully to his feet. Human form was hard to balance. He knelt before the trapped angel, just out of reach. 

“I’ll admit, I’m still impressed. That they assigned you to my City.” Astaroth closed his wings carefully over his back. “I could have run this like London, of course. Offered an alliance. But you are not like Aziraphale. And I am not like Crowley.” He set his palms on the first tier of the mandala, spinning in the sixth dimension. It started to turn, twisting down. Azrael screamed. 

“Come now,” Astaroth said, reaching for another tier. Turning it. “Mortal form isn’t so bad. I should know.” Azrael surged into golden scales for a fraction of a second before the spell crushed it down, forging him limbs, two arms, two legs. “Don’t worry,” Astaroth told the writhing form. “I’ll see you again. I always do. Journeys end, after all, with certain meetings.” 

When the final lock closed, the angel was a tall man, curled on burned ground. Astaroth wove a drifter’s stinking rags over his form, then spun a wallet out of the air, ID cards. He made up a name at random and stuck the wallet into the man’s jacket. With another gesture, the divan disappeared, as did the burn marks on the floor. Astaroth bent, to kiss the man playfully on his temple. Then he folded his wings away, whistling, stepping between dimensions. The man began to stir.

now

John fired the gun and shattered time.

Reality crystallised around the wake of the bullet, fragmenting inwards, as though it was puncturing layers upon layers of mirrors, the shards tearing outwards in new leaves. It slowed. Stopped in the air, an inch away from Santino’s forehead. Santino smiled, swallowing his food, dabbing his mouth. John stared, taking a step back. Winston’s hand was outstretched. Frozen, like everyone else was frozen, in the middle of turning, in the middle of eating, drinking. Breathing.

Santino set the napkin down and got to his feet, stepping away from the table. John tried to fire again, but the gun jammed. He was about to toss it at Santino and grab the knife from the table, only to find himself pinned to the floor, wrists pinioned by an unseen force. Santino sat on his stomach, legs stretched loosely over John’s chest and shoulders, his smile widening. “This latest game of ours is getting boring, old friend.”

That wasn’t English. Or Italian, or any language John had ever heard, and yet he understood it, somehow, as notes rung against his bones. John frowned. Some sort of drug? Psychedelic? He tried to twist free. Santino snapped his fingers, and time unshattered. The shards were gone, even the bullet. Winston lowered his hand, blinking, He looked around, his eyes passing through Santino and John without pausing. Then he frowned at the partly eaten plate on the table, motioning for serving staff to clean up. 

“They’ll forget,” Santino said, pulling a lit cigarette out of the air and taking a drag. “I didn’t want to do this.” 

“Do what?” Too much stimuli. Too little. John tried to concentrate, then blinked as faint seams formed in the air where the bullet had been. Over John’s pinned arms. He stared harder, trying to focus, and the lines over his arms sketched themselves in, taking form as two great gray wings, pressing down over his wrists with impossible weight. 

“Not bad.” Santino sounded pleased. “You were always a fast learner.” He breathed out a lungful of smoke. “Ending our experiment so early. It’s disappointing.”

What experiment? “You’re the one who called in a marker. The contracts.” 

“You’ve evaded complications with more subtlety before.” Santino flicked the cigarette away, as though losing interest, and got off and to his feet. He stretched out his wings, which swept outwards and through tables with no apparent incident, like superimposed images. Then he blew a kiss, as John scrambled up. “Catch me if you can, Azrael.” A step backwards. Santino vanished.

What.

John looked over to Winston, who was back at the counter. He walked closer, and when Winston didn’t respond, John tapped him on the arm. Winston turned, looking through him, clearly puzzled. John waited. No further response. Winston was already talking quietly to the maitre ‘d. 

Threading his way out to the concierge, bemused, John hesitated as Dog surged over from the counter, wagging his tail eagerly. “So you can still see me,” John murmured. He walked up to Charon, waving a hand in front of the concierge’s face. Nothing. John breathed out, pinching at the bridge of his nose. He still had a keycard in his suit. He took the lift, tired now, his head aching. The keycard still worked. John showered and curled up in the bed.

He woke up to a cry of surprise. Sitting up sharply, John froze just in time to see housekeeping back hastily out of the room. “Hello? Yes. It’s Anna at the Presidential Suite? Yes. There’s a dog in here. I don’t know. It was meant to be vacant. Yes. Dangerous looking dog. Maybe it belonged to the previous guest? Okay. I’ll shut it inside. No. It didn’t attack me.” 

The door closed. John stared at Dog, which looked up at him from the foot of the bed, wagging his tail solemnly. He picked Dog up with a bit of effort, carrying it out of the room. Housekeeping didn’t even notice, even though she was right outside the door. John stared at her, shrugged, and took the lift down. 

Morning. John blinked in the warm sun. People on the street _did_ see him, he realized. They just didn’t seem to register it. Walking around him. Dog whined. Poor guy was hungry. John walked over to the closest convenience store and picked out a bag of kibble and a bottle of water, leaving cash on the counter when the shopkeeper ignored him. He poured a small pile of it out for Dog in the nearby park, sitting on a bench to think. 

He had either gone crazy, died(?), or this… magic(?) was real. Didn’t leave many options. John supposed if he was crazy then what he did next didn’t matter. He’d get lucid sooner or later. Or he was dead and a ghost, in which case, John wasn’t sure what the MO was. Maybe he’d fade away eventually. Which left the last option. Magic was real and this was Santino’s doing, somehow. John just had to find him again. Either make him stop or find a way to kill him. 

Dog followed as John started to walk. It was a long way to Santino’s museum, though he didn’t feel tired. He had to stop now and then to keep Dog hydrated, taking bottles of water from shops and leaving change. It was afternoon by the time he got to the broad steps of the museum. John was about to ascend when Dog began to growl. 

He concentrated. He could see faint threads by a pillar. It was easier this time, somehow, to refocus them. Santino laughed as he stumbled, righting himself with a palm against the pillar, wings outstretched. “Back to the scene of the crime, John? You broke a lot of my things. Made a mess.” 

“You tried to kill me.”

“Not at all. Anything of mortal make can’t kill you. Surely you’ve noticed. You’ve been blown up by grenade launchers, hit by cars, shot, stabbed. Each time you’ve just picked yourself up again. Your injuries heal, more quickly than they should. And you don’t really age.” 

“What,” John said slowly, “are you talking about?” 

“That clever little trick you keep pulling on me. Do it to yourself.” 

John glanced down at his hands, then over his shoulder, concentrating. The same seams, cut near imperceptibly through reality. He _pulled_. He stumbled, startled by the sudden weight. _Wings_. Three sets of them, unfurled from his shoulders, the middle set larger than Santino’s, the rest smaller. They were a pale creamy colour, not quite white, clipping through the back of his shirt as though the fabric didn't exist. 

“What…” John poked at a wing, pulling his fingers away as he _felt_ it. “What is this?” 

Santino chuckled. “Come. I’ll have someone look after your dog. If you want to talk.” When John didn’t move, Santino tucked his thumbs into his pockets. “Or if you want to fight, you can try. But that gun you have won’t do anything to me. Or your knife. You can try to use your bare hands, but that will only make me laugh.” 

“What are you?” John paused. “What are _we_?”

“Always an excellent question. Come.” 

There was a private gallery, one John hadn’t gone through on his way down hunting Santino. It was a vast room with a single divan. On the walls were paintings, mostly oil. Some were familiar, even though John didn’t know the names. “Originals,” Santino said, with a nod at a large painting of a kneeling angel in a garden before a woman. “The ones in the museums around the world are copies. Ones that I made personally. Humans can’t tell the difference that way.” 

The paintings were almost all of angels. There was only one with demons, one dark panel of three complex panels. The leftmost one was of a mostly unpopulated earth, the central panel an expansive depiction of nude men and women in sexual revelry. Santino followed his stare. “You like that one? ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’. Fascinating piece.” 

It was hard to look away. “You’re going to tell me that we’re angels?” 

Santino laughed. “ _You’re_ an angel. Or you were.”

“And you’re a… demon?” 

“In a sense. No horns. No tail.” Santino settled down on the divan, grinning, wings lax on the floor. 

“You Fell,” John said. The knowledge had wormed up to mind, fogged and imprecise. “You were an angel once too.” 

“Oh yes.”

“Azar…” John frowned to himself. That had been the wrong sound. “Astaroth. Before that. Samael.”

“Now that’s a name I haven’t heard for a long time.” Santino inclined his head. “We were two sides of the same coin, once. Death had two angels to its name. Maybe that is why things are how they are. The two of us, ever circling.”

John glanced over at the paintings, at the gold leaf halos, the carefully fletched wings. “You did something to me.” 

“And you should thank me for it. A short while ago I told you that half of what you are now is because of me. I was being modest. You learned mortal pain because of me. And you learned to love because of me. You learned what it was like to be happy because of me, to grieve because of me. It was a difficult fit at times, perhaps. And you will never be quite human enough for most humans. But you are close enough.” Santino looked John over, his smile lazily appreciative. “Did you like it?” 

John stormed over. Santino laughed as John curled fingers around his throat, kneeling over him. He tried squeezing, but Santino merely grinned at him, relaxed, waiting until John let go before leaning up, pressing his fingers into the roots of John’s main span of wings, kneading— 

Pleasure nearly shocked John off his perch. Santino rubbed higher and John gasped, arching. He tried to twist free and Santino kissed him, hungry, wings nudging up against John’s. John moaned, blindly kissing him back, sinking his hands into fistfuls of feathers. Santino nudged against something that made John jerk, startled by the warm shock, then Santino was chuckling, kneading down, ecstasy flaring down every nerve. John sagged against Santino, breathing hard, wide-eyed. Sticky. Santino kissed his temple, amused, and made a gesture, cleaning them up. 

“Been a while?” Santino asked, mocking. He petted John’s wings, the lowest tier, rubbing the heel of his hands tenderly over their spans. John didn’t say anything, blinking. Santino’s hands hadn’t just been casually familiar with John’s wings. They’d _felt_ familiar too.

“We’ve done this before.”

“Oh yes. Many times.” 

“Before the Fall?” 

“Hmm.” Santino nuzzled John’s throat, kissing his pulse. “There’s a reason why the City sent you after me in the end. They probably got tired of losing soldiers. Angels are a limited resource nowadays.” He nipped John’s jaw, then his ear, tugging lightly. “But I can play this game with you forever. For as long as I want.” 

“What game?” John asked, even though he knew. They _had_ played this game before. Time and time again. He shook his head, the memories still foggy.

“Games where we are strangers. Friends. Enemies. Lovers.” Santino kissed his mouth, a possessive, lingering touch. “There’s nothing in Creation quite like you, Azrael.” 

“Wait,” John said, but he could feel the first lock closing in, like a tuning fork struck painfully close, the reverberation humming through his frame. He was closing his eyes. “Wait,” he tried to say again, but it was expelled as a pained breath. There was a ghost of a kiss on his mouth, then the world went dark.

then/now

Astaroth settled the sleeping man on the park bench and frowned at the dog. “I’m not going to hurt him.” Not yet, anyway.

The dog growled, teeth bared, but knew better than to come too close. It had trailed after them from the museum, ears flat against its skull, frightened but not frightened enough to abandon its master. Astaroth ignored it, patting the man down until he found a wallet. It changed colour under his touch, the cards rewriting themselves. He left some cash, and changed the name on the identity card, tucking the wallet away again. 

Then he kissed Azrael on the temple and walked away from the bench, strolling back in the direction of the museum, hands tucked into his pockets. Whistling. Behind him, the man began to stir.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: manic_intent  
> tumblr: manic-intent


End file.
